Readers' Choice: Best Plant Nursery

Updated 3:56 pm, Sunday, June 16, 2013

A lollipop plant is among the thousands of interesting varieties of gardening options at Rainbow Gardens, which garnered the Readers' Choice award for best plant nursery.

A lollipop plant is among the thousands of interesting varieties of gardening options at Rainbow Gardens, which garnered the Readers' Choice award for best plant nursery.

Photo: Express-News File Photo

Readers' Choice: Best Plant Nursery

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When children arrive at Rainbow Gardens on Bandera Road, they make a beeline for the koi pond with a water wheel and a big fish. Grownups, too, like seeing the fish, a 30-inch-long albino catfish, that lives in the pond. They also enjoy the butterfly garden and demonstration gardens set under oak trees on the 6-acre site.

The scene isn't the main draw of the nursery that claimed Readers' Choice honors as best plant nursery. What brings shoppers back is the plants — thousands of varieties of them.

“The average mass merchandiser carries 300 to 400 varieties (of plants) in the course of a year. We probably carry 3,000 to 4,000 varieties,” says Frank Kirby, who founded the nursery in 1976 at West Avenue and Blanco Road. It relocated to 8516 Bandera Road in 1985, and another location at 2585 Thousand Oaks Drive opened a few years later.

Kirby and his two co-owners, Dan Keith and Ronnie Grell, are horticulturists who understand that local gardeners need drought-tolerant xeriscape plants.

“We're familiar with most of the plants and how they perform,” he says. “Encyclopedic signs” provide information about how to grow the plants along with background.

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“It keeps you from buying things that aren't going to hold on,” Kirby says. “You can use your hard-earned dollar and buy something that's going to thrive when it gets hot.”

Rainbow Gardens on Bandera Road tied with Shades of Green as the Critics' Choice for best plant nursery.